Archive Results for ' tt'
Tuesday Tips: Generate Motivation
All of us need a reason, or rather motivation, to do anything. Even if it’s something we enjoy, the reason we do it is because we enjoy doing it, thus that is our reason. Motivation can be a hard thing to keep consistent though.
Tuesday Tips: Remember to Rest
Lately, I’ve been doing quite a bit and my body has definitely been feeling it. I’ve realized that I’m doing too much too fast. Every so often I forget this handy little rule and end up needing to remind myself: Remember to Rest.
The general idea most of us have stuck in our head is to practice, practice, practice. The problem is we generally forget that our bodies have a specified rate at which they “repair”. If you work yourself too hard but don’t get enough rest in between, you’ll actually do more damage to yourself than good. Without rest, instead of toning or building muscles your muscles will instead begin breaking down. This can also result from a lack of proper nutrition. The more you work out, the more your body will need to burn. That’s not to say we’re all Michael Phelps and need to consume unimaginable amounts of food to make up for our exercise for the day. However, you should be expecting to be eating more than you normally do.
I won’t go in depth on what you should be eating, because that wouldn’t be an article, that would be a book. 
Just remember to take enough time out of each day to rest so that your body can recover. You may think you’re doing okay, or that you can just “deal with it”, but believe me when I say that it will eventually catch back up with you. Also, if your body breaks down or you get sick, your training will have all been for nothing, now won’t it?
Tuesday Tips: Pay Attention to Yourself
Recently, for the past week or so, I haven’t been able to train as much because I injured my ankle while I was out training with my instructor at the public park we meet at. Currently, my ankle is much better and I’ve been going at it again, but I’ve just been thinking about how I hurt my ankle while I was training.
My friend, who was out there training with me, thinks it is from a kick I performed on him. Me and the instructor go at it kind of rough, and I had been working with him before he told me to switch up and work with my friend. Going from the change, the very first move I performed was a round house kick to his left leg’s inner thigh. Let’s just say that he immediately let me know that I was going a bit too rough. I wasn’t kicking full force or anything, I just didn’t simply pull much of the force behind my kick. I may not be the greatest at control, but I’m not so bad that I can’t pull a kick rather than go harsh. It just happened to be that my mind was already in the zone, because when I’m sparring with my instructor I take it a lot more seriously. I don’t get tense or anything, it’s just that I have to actually try otherwise he’ll pop me in the jaw, and I know it.
The point is, I wasn’t paying enough attention to myself. I should have realized who I was now going against and immediately adjusted, but I didn’t. Now, I’m not thoroughly convinced that I did hurt my ankle when I performed that kick because I didn’t feel it. However, I never felt my ankle get hurt at all till later on that day. It was quite wet and muddy outside, so it’s possible that I simply twisted it at some point when performing a kick or when pivoting. One attribute that I believe is a blessing but also a curse, that I have, is that I don’t usually ever feel pain when I get injured when sparring/fighting. Sure, I feel it completely later on, but at that moment I don’t notice it. It’s a blessing because I keep going without hesitation, yet it’s a curse because I could be seriously injured and possibly not notice till it’s too late.
The point is to pay attention to yourself as much as you pay attention to your opponent. A broken bone may stop a match(MMA, etc), but in a life or death situation it won’t mean anything other than that your opponent now has an advantage. Pay attention to how you execute your moves, where you land them, and what your condition is. Too many people often punch themselves out, so to speak(and literally), because they simply forget to breathe.
Tuesday Tips: Become Versatile
Over the past week I’ve realized one major thing I do all the time, isn’t quite as common as I thought. I train a variety of ways to become versatile, whereas many people seem to just train their style or even if they train multiple styles they may neglect other training such as weapons.
I’ve heard this question far too often, “Why train to be able to use a sword if it’s not an applicable weapon in today’s age?”. I can agree to a certain point, but it’s almost as if those people are looking down a very, very narrow telescope at the problem to the point that they can’t even see the obvious. It is true that a sword, of any kind, is not a likely weapon you’ll be able to “choose” in a real circumstance. Of course, if I got attacked at my home, I’d have plenty to go around but it’s well known most attacks aren’t while you’re in your home. They are while you’re are out somewhere where a sword is not going to be handy. Yet, the purpose of training with any weapon, whether it be a sword, staff, sai, etc isn’t to be able to use those items themselves in a real situation. It’s to be able to use and apply the methods and coordination you learned, from having trained with those weapons, with other weapons. For instance, I may no longer have my staff, sword, etc but hand me any item you can find lying around and I’ll turn it into a weapon of some sort. The coordination needed to be able to utilize any weapon to an extreme efficiently is the key point though. If I’ve only trained in Escrima with short sticks and I’m given a pool stick or some long weapon I’m probably not going to feel as comfortable using it as I would if I had instead been given something shorter like a crowbar(I could break the pool stick in half and use it as two short sticks, but I’m just trying to get the point across ).
Training to become versatile doesn’t mean you just need to add weapons to your training regime, that’s merely just one part of it. Becoming versatile means that in any situation you’re put in, you quickly adapt to the environment to control the situation. One, more common method, is by fighting people of various styles and sizes. Fighting someone a lot taller than you is totally different than fighting someone a lot shorter than you. That’s why it is important to train with as many different people as you can when you get the chance. I train sometimes with a guy who is roughly 6’5-6’7, while I am only 5’11, so I get a good amount of variety when I do get to train with him but I don’t get to fight with guys who are just plain big, very often. Therefore, I get excited whenever I get the chance to, as it’s a completely different experience.
Tuesday Tips: Remember to be lazy
I’ve covered various ways about how you can switch up your training regimes, etc like using your punching bag as a replacement for working out. Often we try to remember to get enough practice in, and when we do practice we also like to count it as our exercise, which is okay but we need to keep one thing in mind: Remember to be lazy.
It’s not often that we are told being lazy is an okay thing, but in Martial Arts I often find it’s one of the best attributes a Martial Artist can have. Now, before you misunderstand, let me brief you on exactly what I mean. The more we work at becoming better and more powerful, in the future we can actually dilute our own Martial Arts. The man who is lazy doesn’t work at how he can become better or more powerful, he works at how he can become more lazy.
Just imagine for a moment, that there are two different people who have happened to become Martial Art rivals. Each has worked at becoming better for the same amount of time, but one has worked at simply learning more and more techniques and becoming more knowledgeable, while the other simply worked at being able to defeat his opponent in the least amount of movements. The man that knows many techniques and many styles may be able to out perform the lazy man in stunts and showmanship, but the lazy man will have a much higher advantage in a real combat situation. Why? Because the lazy man has trained at learning to win with the least amount of movements. The lazy man has trained to a much greater degree by just realizing that those who don’t have to do much to win are the true masters. Less is sometimes more.
I’ve often heard that the greater you become in Martial Arts, the bigger you become. Obviously, this is a joke, but the implied message is that as you become better in the skills you’ve learned, they are no longer an effort for you and give you nor your body a challenge. Thus, many of those who advance higher in their Martial Art have to also exercise on the side if they wish to maintain a good shape. It all makes sense when you think about it. Are you more impressed when someone fights an opponent for five minutes before defeating him, or when the man defeats his opponent within the first couple of moves? Ponder on this subject and attempt to come up with your own conclusion, since it doesn’t have to match mine.
Tuesday Tips: Aggressive Relaxation
I’ve had problems in the past(and still do to a degree) relaxing when I’m sparring. I’ve always tended to throw a punch with a good amount of stiffness. Even if most people don’t notice it, its been there. My instructor has told me about it, and others as well. The problem isn’t necessarily that the impact itself is tense, it’s the motion.
This reminds me of the way my arms use to be: Stiff.
My method for trying to filter out this stiffness and adapt to becoming more relaxed has always been to shake things out and try to slow down. I use to argue a bit with my instructor over this sometimes. He’d alert me to the fact that I was using too much strength(muscle) or was too tense while we were sparring, and every time I’d try to slow myself down. The problem with slowing down is that now he’d step his game up just a bit more and completely dominate me. Either I’d be dominated or I’d be tense(but still keeping up). I would get frustrated at the fact that he’d tell me I have to be able to do it all. I must be relaxed while maintaining speed, but also packing a whopping of a punch if I decided to choose to. I like to refer to this as Aggressive Relaxation. And for the longest time I couldn’t get it down. I felt like I wasn’t gaining anywhere in that area even as I improved in other abilities.
Finally, one day while I was sparring with him, it hit me like a brick to my face. The solution for me was so simple. “Open your hands!”, is what suddenly came to my mind and for some reason I followed its command. The moment I opened up my hands and stopped trying to hit was the first moment I began to be able to fight relaxed. Rather than worrying about throwing a fist or a punch, I was simply throwing my empty hand out. This allowed me to feel how I should be throwing my fists. I could tell the difference significantly. When my hands were open, I was able to easily release a fury of punches out, but not become tense because I wasn’t focused on what happened when my hand hit. My hand would simply tap or slap my sparring partner, enough to prove that had I closed my hand at the last moment, they wouldn’t have gotten off so easily.
Once I got the feeling down of how it should feel, I was able to use fa-jing and at the last moment close my hand into a fist and put power behind it all. I will have to work at it for a long time to perfect it though, but I’m okay with that, as long as I know I’m progressing. Standing still is the most frustrating thing for me.
Everybody is different and so the method that is needed to produce relaxation will be different for others. But for me, for some reason I had it built into my subconscious that the moment my hands closed became the moment that I was going to tense up. Maybe it’s that I wished to bash or break through whatever my hand came into contact, or maybe not, I’m not really sure. All I know is the instance that I changed that one little attribute to what I was already doing, my eyes were opened.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suddenly the most relaxed fighter, nor is it something I don’t still have to work at, but the most important thing is that I now understand it all. Therefore, the tip for today is to try this method for you if you are having the same problem as me. It may or may not work for you, but it can’t hurt to try it. Already, because of this small change, which caused me to not only realize the change but feel it, I can now throw punches with my fist closed that are quite relaxed. There are times I still get too tense, but I know what and how to work at it. Just rest assured that you have something holding you back from becoming more relaxed, but it can be found and eliminated. I’m sure there are other things holding me back from becoming even more relaxed, but I’ll be sure to find them over time.
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- 2012/02/03 | Lang-8 http://t.co/p5PGkthp #lang8 1 day ago
- @kanjiwarrior That's probably better than people thinking you're funny, when you're trying to be serious. xD in reply to Kanjiwarrior 1 day ago
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